Now I’m Sweating
by yokomolotov
Now I’m Sweating
now I’m sweating,
sweating and I remember walking
really heavy and fat at seven-teen-
it was like ninety degrees
a walk-in oven.
what did I know then?
it feels like that time
happened to someone else,
some girl who happened to die
or fade into obscurity
with stretch marks and cesarean scars
a passive husband and grimy faced children-
but then again I catch
glimpses of that girl
in my own long mirrors
and realize it was
my life a long time ago.
so I was trying to get a job
at some grocery store
and was walking home from the pee test,
nothing to worry about
such as the vanilla life I was tame-
(a subordinate in denial)
walking from the lab in
a sweltering haze
wanting to die
frizzy hair
stuck and humid
some boy I thought I loved
some boy I thought I would die without
sleeping sound in the air conditioning
in my bed-
and I lurched on
busses passing me
with the mild hope I would never sit in one again-
and that I could please a dandruffed haired
and acne scared boy
who harvested dreams of my toil.
as I showered clean and fell
like a fleshy tree with yesterday’s make up
still clinging
beating self-loathing with sleep,
I woke a decade later,
a slim shadow free
and wish that the old me knew
what I had starved to learn-
I smile and think,
I don’t even have a picture
to remember all this by.